YouTube Plans to Add 'Information Cues' to Help Debunk Fake News and Lessen Misinformation
YouTube is home to how-to videos, movie trailers, and the occasional conspiracy theory videos and propaganda. The platform, thus, announced at the SXSW 2018 that they will be dealing with hoaxes by providing third-party information that viewers can turn to in order to verify the facts.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki revealed that they are pushing back against misinformation in one of the talks at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival, or SXSW. One way they are planning to do this is by adding "Information Cues," or small pop-up cards that could link to a third party source with additional information, as Engadget reported.
These third-party sources could include Wikipedia, especially for videos pertaining to some "widely accepted events" that a video might be making misleading statements about.
"When there are videos that are focused around something that's a conspiracy — and we're using a list of well-known internet conspiracies from Wikipedia — then we will show a companion unit of information from Wikipedia showing that here is information about the event," Wojcicki said, as quoted by The Verge.
Wojcicki cited the moon landing as an example of an information cue excerpted from Wikipedia which might help debunk a conspiracy theory video about fake lunar excursions, in one such case.
YouTube and Wojcicki did not share at the time how many such conspiracies they plan to cover in their list, although the CEO did hint that they could add more topics to it as needed.
"What I like about this unit is that it's actually pretty extensible," she noted.
Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation that manages the crowd-sourced encyclopedia, meanwhile, may have been taken a bit by surprise by the announcement. "We were not given advance notice of this announcement," said the Wikimedia Foundation as part of their statement posted on Twitter.
